Structure-guided design of a PfCyRPA-based #vaccine against blood-stage #malaria
โก๏ธ doi.org/10.1038/s44321-026-00376-x
By N. Alam, @parasitematt.bsky.social and colleagues @ox.ac.uk @kavlioxford.bsky.social
This immunogen is cheap and easy to produce and elicits a high quality antibody response. Project led by @nawsadalam. Read all about it:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Introducing our new blood-stage malaria vaccine immunogen based on the essential invasion protein PfCyRPA. By understanding where on PfCyRPA the best antibodies bind, we used structure guided design to generate PfCyRPA-EM, which contains only the epitopes of the best antibodies.
Excited about parasites? Love watching movies? Come join our Wellcome-funded project! Parasitology friends, please do share far and wide.
We are very much looking forward to being @courbongautier.bsky.socialโs new home!!
New vaccine immunogens coming next! This study was led by @brendanfarrell as part of a great collaboration with Joshua Tan and Andrew Cooper, who isolated the human antibodies. Read all about it:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Check out our latest study on the PfRIPR protein,
essential for the malaria parasite to get inside our blood cells. We show how antibodies block the function of PfRIPR by preventing its flexible hinges from bending, or by stopping it from compacting as part of its mechanism.
Very proud!
Delighted to review the latest findings on how malaria parasites get into our blood cells and how we might stop it!
Delighted to share our review on how those malaria parasites get into our blood cells and how we might stop them.
rdcu.be/eGnUl
Thanks Francesca! Happy to share what we do and always happy to learn from others!
Happy to chat some time and share our paperwork. Hope all is well!
The Higgins lab are proud to have received a Gold LEAF award, recognising our efforts to minimise the environmental impact of our research. Thanks to lab manager, Hannah Ivison, Alex Cook and to everyone in the lab for working on this together. More to do!
An exciting opportunity to start an independent position as a research fellow in protozoan parasitology at Christ's College, Cambridge and the Department of Pathology:
www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/52020/
Delighted to share the final version of Richard Zhou's study on how the CD163 scavenger receptor cleans up after toxic haemoglobin spills out from our blood cells. An amazing grabber mechanism!
rdcu.be/ewPA2
Sounds wonderful. Yes please!! Iโve signed up for the meeting.
Thanks Freddy!! Hopefully see you soon.
Thanks Juan! Hope to see you soon.
It was a huge privilege to start my research career at LMB. Hugely formative, giving the chance to interact with wonderful scientists, including pioneers of structural biology.
Thanks Joana! Hopefully see you soon.
Honoured to be elected an EMBO member. Looking forward to being part of this wonderful organisation that does so much for European science. Also thanks to Kavli Oxford for always using a picture which makes me look 20 years young. I own you guys!
Thanks Kavli for highlighting @sam-chamberlain.bsky.social โs work with our wonderful collaborators, Shiroh and Hisashi. New insights into how activating KIR receptors might help fight malaria!
Fantastic news! ๐๐๐
How the #malaria #parasite evades the immune systemโฆ and how the human body fights back: @sam-chamberlain.bsky.social and @parasitematt.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk make ground-breaking discovery, just published in @nature.com. Read more โฌ๏ธ
A fun collaboration with KIR-binding RIFINs discovered by Shiroh Iwanaga, Hisashi Arase and Akihito Sakoguchi. Structures and molecular mechanisms led by @sam-chamberlain.bsky.social . NK synapses imaged with Mike Dustin, Marcus Widdess, Alex Morch. Generous funding from @wellcometrust.bsky.social
Our latest story describes the amazing evolutionary battle between malaria parasite and human. The parasite evolved RIFINs to bind inhibitory KIR receptors and suppress immune cell function while humans have activating KIR receptors to bind these RIFINs to kill parasites!
Extremely happy to share the first paper of my postdoc work with @parasitematt.
It is the product of a great collaboration with Akihito Sakoguchi, Hisashi Arase and Shiroh Iwanaga at Osaka University as well as Marcus Widdess and Mike Dustin here in Oxford.
rdcu.be/eqx2J
๐งต 1/6
Looking for a fully-funded D. Phil. / Ph.D. studentship in structural biology and vaccinology? Come to join our team. Fully and generously funded by a donation from the Kyner-Field family with full fees at overseas level. Join us!
www.bioch.ox.ac.uk/studentships
Nawsad presented our structure-guided design of RH5top, our latest blood stage-malaria vaccine immunogen, in talk and poster at the Malaria Gordon conference. The culmination of many studies from the lab and collaborators and doing well in pre-clinical testing! More soon.
Pleased to share our review on two key families of proteins in the ๐๐ญ๐ข๐ด๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐ช๐ถ๐ฎ arsenal: pfEMP1 and RIFINs. Both of these fascinating families facilitate immune evasion and survival within the human host during a malaria infection.โฃ
โฃ
Read here: โฃ
kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...
